I am about to embark on my first e-commerce website (to be closely followed by another e-commerce site) and I have been doing lots of research and reading on the topic.

However, could someone please explain the entire e-commerce process and the different options for displaying items, providing shopping cart/checkout facility, accepting online payment and realising the money in the bank. I am baffled by the many terms, 3rd party processors, gateways etc. Could someone please explain these and differences.

The first client has a normal merchant account (no internet merchant account) and should have a healthy number of transactions per month.

The second client has a very low budget and will have a lesser sales volume (no merchant account either).

Companies are UK/Irish based.

I appreciate any explanations/ reccomendations. Many thanks in advance.


Kind regards, J

Welcome to the forums j_uprichard!

Well as far as displaying items - I usually leave that up to the client. It is their website & they probably have something particular in mind.

Have you looking at some carts? Are you wanting PHP / ASP? There are thousands of carts already developed. Are you wanting to write your own application or use one of those?

As far as the check out - most merchant accounts (electronic gateways) provide an API to integrate into your shopping cart. This API will help to verify the credit card.

A third party processor basically has a merchant account issued to them & they allow you to use it. Usually the payout is every couple of weeks. There might be no charge on the set up & the discount rate is usually a bit higher than a regualr merchant account.

An electronic payment gateway is basically the same thing as the point of sale terminal at the grocery store.

Thanks for your help and welcome Corey. I think I'm going to use OSCommerce (PHP and open source). If my client receives a merchant account, will their bank provide the API to accept online payments? Is this API a means of entering card details, checking for fraud and charing their card while crediting the clients' account. What does this API look like?
I assumed I would need to add someone like Realex (Ire) or Worldpay to perform that step. Are you saying that this is not necessary?

Also, regarding my second client (no merchant account, smaller volume of sales). What would anyone reccommend for an e-commerce solution. She wants to sell approx 10-20 items, but is willing to process payments offline. I believe there is no need for OSCommerce. Any other smaller shopping cart systems for such a client?

Well the API is provide by the electronic payment gateway actually. Most banks outsource the CC processing to another company since the banks do not specialize in CC transactions. The API - it provides the integration for your website to the electronic payment gateway. One gateway that is pretty big over there, is protx. But your processor has to be compatible with it.

As far as the second client, you might consider paypal. Not being in the US, you have few choices & then those choices are a little more expensive. It might not be worth it actually. You can also check out http://www.mals-e.com - they might be able to help you out.